James 1:12-18

The Beatitude on Endurance (cf. James 5:11 and note). Trial is still neutral: it is affliction which tests and develops loyalty. But since human nature has a bias towards evil, a trial exerted upon man's evil desire (James 1:14) becomes a temptation. As in Romans 5:4, endurance produces approvedness, which brings the reward. The word crown (as papyri show), can mean a royal diadem as well as a wreath of victory: the latter is better here. Peter's unfading crown of glory is the same idea, and both (as in Revelation 2:10) go back probably to an unrecorded saying of Jesus (cf. 2 Timothy 4:8, also Deuteronomy 30:20). The denial that God tempts is based on the self-evidenced fact that there is nothing in Him to supply the seed of evil. This comes from our desire when still unbent by submission to God's will. In itself desire is neutral; Jesus Himself had it (Luke 22:15). The allegory of Sin as mother of Death is magnificently worked out by Milton, P.L. ii. In contrast to this error, James declares that Every gift that is good, every bounty that is flawless - droppeth from heaven upon the place beneath'so we may render to suggest the effect of a metrical quotation probably recognisable in the original. For the Father of the (heavenly) lights, cf. Job 38:7. Unlike the moving sun, the earth and moon with light and shadow succeeding, He knows no mutability, nor overshadowing of change. We are His offspring by the act of His will through Truth's own fiat: not literally the first-fruits of His creation, Man becomes such in dignity by the fact that God is his Father, and not only his Creator.